Riding Form Effects

The Uncreated

The Uncreated

108
Creating this topic so we could share our observations of the handling differences certain riding form settings affect. It's clear that some settings, namely horizontal shifting across the seat produce noticeable effects. The question is, do the less obvious settings produce any potentially useful results aside from a simple cosmetic change?

For example, does changing arm angle result in smoother throttle control where the rear tire would be less likely to spin? If not, exactly what does arm angle affect other than the visual style of the rider? That's one question of many that I have, personally.

If you notice anything difference when you tweak certain form settings, let's archive those here. When we come up with enough, perhaps we could create a GT Planet exclusive FAQ bearing the name of all us contributors.

Admin, what are the chances we could make this thread a sticky?

What are your observations?

Uncreated

-- ONGOING EDITS BELOW --


Confirmed Effects:

Seating:

Tip: Forward seating reduces understeering.
Warning: Rear wheel traction suffers. Too much weight foward vastly increases your chances of highsiding during deep turns as rear wheel traction is lessened overall.
 
to be honest im in the dark about riding position, i have since reached 100% in the game without ever messing with it so im kind of interested in what different settings do
 
with seat position (for/aft) moves the weight forward/backwards. so, if you need more front grip, you should move the riders weight to the front. or if the rear tyre spins up too easyly, move the rider back in the seating position.

concerning arm position, im not sure in the game ive read that for best steering inputs, you want to keep your arm parallel to the handle and your palms flat on the handles. ive have noticed that a too low number on arm position can make steering feel heavier.

feel free to correct me on those though :)
 
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so, if you need more front grip, you should move the riders weight to the front. or if the rear tyre spins up too easyly, move the rider back in the seating position.
Click to expand...

That sounds logical, but are these observations you made based on your knowledge of real world motorcycles or did you realize a noticeable difference in handling in the game when you changed that setting?

I wish Polyphony was more clear on these things.

Uncreated
 
uncreated - until i moved my seating position to -3.0, every bike had really bad exit understeer. its still there, but, considerably less on specially smooth tracks. the rear tyre grip seems to sufer somewhat, but, i can confensate(sp) since i use the right thumbstick for throttle/brake.
 
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uncreated - until i moved my seating position to -3.0, every bike had really bad exit understeer. its still there, but, considerably less on specially smooth tracks. the rear tyre grip seems to sufer somewhat, but, i can confensate(sp) since i use the right thumbstick for throttle/brake.
Click to expand...

Excellent. That's very consistent with something I determined for a post I made in another thread -- lowering the front suspension (preload) forces the weight bias of the bike forward, reducing understeer. The tradeoff however is exactly what you say: rear wheel traction suffers. In fact, oversteer increases, making highsides more of a possibility. One can artificially control oversteering by accelerating before entering a turn I heard, as the act of accelerating forces a bike's weight bias backward, but then we're back to understeer square one. It's a fine line.

Based on what you say about forward seating, rider/bike weight dynamics seems to have been modelled into the game.

Good info.

I'll update my first post with confirmed effects as I get them.

Uncreated
 
I use the lean body and "manually" tuck up if I want to have a faster transition through a series.

I set my body lean to extremes... I shift my weight all the way forward and all the way out so that I can use the body of the rider to help change direction that much faster, especially if its a rough track and more over, to keep the front end glued down. If the back wants to spin, its more of a lift of the throttle vs. riding off the track. Hit L2 to bring you back in the tuck to make speed greater off apex, but watch that oversteer. I like the option of being able to make the bike rotate better/faster. There is a balance that only YOU can figure out. My extremes work for me, sort of. Look at the different challenges on this board, the 600 and the naked bikes. Use their lap times as a real time yard stick of what you're doing. Some folk are cutting 1.17's at Deep Forest where I'm at best cutting 1.20's-1.21's very inconsistently on the ZX6 RM that I won the TT championship with more than a 20 point margin. And I thought I was bad-ass on it.
 
ive been trying to find a style that suits trial mountain using neterual as a base. out of habbit, i put seating position to -3.0, but, from apex to exit the bike was fighting me. spinning the rear tyre and refusing to hold a line. so, i change set position leg position to 0 (zero) and the rear traction is up (as it a bit of understeer) but the resistance to my inputs is less.

replays look funny with that style. :lol:
 
for those of you without the prima guide....

Head Roll Angle: increase for manueverability (man) / decrease for speed. reccomended (rec'd) near 15.
Head Pitch Angle: raise for speed/ lower for man
Torso Roll Angle: raise for man / lower for speed
Torso Yaw Angle: raise for man / lower for speed
Body Lean: raise for speed / lower for man
Arm Angle: rec'd to leave it in the 50s
Seat Position: rec'd to leave it near 0
Lateral Slide: increase for speed / decrease for man. rec'd near 15
Vertical Slide: increase for speed / decrease for man. rec'd near 0
Leg Angle: increase for speed / decrease for man. rec'd near 40
Body Lean: increase for speed / decrease for man

these are from the book. its a great starting point then based on the track and your bike setup you can go from there.
 
Lean body gives you the best corner speed. Just look at the top moto GP and WSB guys, they all do it. You do have to watch out, caue it tends to push the front end when changing directions in chicanes if you carry too much speed.
 
In real life I move forward and back all the time. Under braking I will sit as far back as I can, obviously this keeps weight over the rear and helps keep the wheel on the ground, although it still goes light and ends up in the air sometimes. Through corners I will try and sit more over the front or in the middle at least although its not as cruitial. Bikes dont really under steer or over steer, well not like cars anyway. Changing the front and rear ride height will change the behaiviour more than your riding style. Instead of doing this with preload you can drop the forks through the yokes, raising the forks up through the yokes lowers the front and will, in general make the bike turn in with less effort, but by doing this you make it more unstable. Thats why it makes it easier to change direction. A stable bike will want to go in the direction its going more than an unstable bike thus making it easier to change. I found by lowering the front in this way it reduces your ability to brake as hard. More weight over the front means less weight keeping the rear down, especically under heavy braking where the forks will dive significantly lowering the front further and moving even more weight over the front. The Showa suspension on my RS125 has a ride height adjuster on the rear shock too (Aswell as the usual preload, compression and rebound damping). Preload is used to adjust for Rider weight and or road conditions (bumps, overall speed of corners and the curcuit etc) and it generally makes it softer or harder. Preload as the name implies preloads the springs in either the forks or rear shock so that it makes it harder or easier to compress them further, but by adjusting the ride height like the TT way doesn't make sense to me. Reducing preload will lower the ride height to a minor extent, but make it travel alot more with the same effort, in a way making it softer, under braking softer preload in the front will increase the suspension movement and lower the front more (so to some degree making it turn better), possibly bottoming out if done too much. Tyres and how you ride makes more difference though at least with 125's, theres that much grip and so little weight and power, suspension is less cruitial and im at National level. There seems no limit to the ammount of corner speed you can carry on these GP125s so it gives alot of confidence when entering corners. And its not like they dont go fast in a straight line. My Datalogging shows a 0-100km/h time of around 4.5 seconds and generally about 190-200km/h tops depending on the curcuit. Unlike the TT game you can still easily loose the rear putting the power on too early, so setting the suspension is crutial to getting what little power we have down to the ground. And when a 125 slides bad you are off lol, there is that much grip and so little weight it will tie itself in knots when the rear is not in perfect line with the front.

With bikes in general its more how confident you are with the machine that makes the biggest difference to your lap times. With Cars and Karts, machine setup is more critical.

Im no suspension expert as I haven't really messed about much with it, but this is what I have been led to believe so far and it seems im learning new stuff on a daily basis, so theres probably some errors in wat I say, so if anyone knows anymore or if there is some blatant crap written here just say. but I think in TT you should look at preload as ride height.
 
heh. after reading that, its interesting to see how "wrong" pd got it :indiff:

-sr- i dont mind, thats the form i use for nordschilefe and fast tracks, ive another for bumpy tracks and yet another for tracks like suzuka with a lot of quick direction changes.
 
I daresay some people might use fore/aft seating position adjustment to compensate for subconscious Y-axis movement of the steering stick (probably forward) they may have begun doing in car driving games where it doesn't matter.

So it would seem one should learn to consciously control the fore-and-aft stick movement, and learn to read what one is doing, before relying on the seating position. But sliding (the riding form setting) right back certainly seemed, for me, to settle a few bikes down in the challenges.
 
I'm one of those who pushes the stick forward, only started doing it with TT superbikes, now I find it hard to not do it when playing tourist trophy, I think pushing forward and turning may restrict how far I can lean the bike.

Paul
 

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